Akash Sharma and Razi Faraz Khan
Govt MLB Arts and Commerce College, Jiwaji university, Madhya Pradesh.
Pages:169-176
The present century belongs to the Internet. With the progress of society, Internet
usage has been tremendously increasing especially among young adults for educational,
professional, recreational, and other purposes. The Internet has transformed our life to
the extent that the present generation is referred as the Internet generation, but at the
same time it has also affected the mental well-being of individuals, especially the adults.
Therefore, this research explores the relationship between Internet Addiction with
Psychological Distress among Indian Young Adults. This study included young adults
from diverse backgrounds, gender, work-life etc. in the age range of 18-26 years (N=103).
The Internet Addiction Scale by Young. was used to screen out internet addicts and
the DASS 42 scale of Lovibond and Lovibond for assessing Depression, Anxiety, stress,
and overall Psychological Distress among participants using the Snowball and
randomized sampling method. To derive the results, Pearson’s Product Moment
Correlation was used. Out of 103 participants, 71 young adults have some level of
addiction which was correlated with their corresponding scores on the DASS 42 scale
to assess the psychological distress among them. The results showed moderate positive
correlation between Internet Addiction and overall psychological distress (r=0.48). The
effect of Internet Addiction on individual variable of Psychological Distress i.e., Depression
(r=0.45), Anxiety (r=0.47), and Stress (r=0.50) were measured, and found to be moderate
correlated on all variables. Further, the research found psychological distress to be
more in female internet addicts (83.9%) than the male addicts (80%). Also, the internet
addiction was found to be higher among rural participants (78.57%) than urban
participants (63.63%) but the severity of internet addiction is found to be higher in urban
participants